It kind of makes me wonder what country I'm living in when I pick up the newspaper and read this from the Associated Press:

"With crop prices mired near record lows, the government says farm earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new farm program or approves more emergency payments."

Hello? Is this free enterprise, profit-and-loss America, or have I crossed over into the Twilight Zone: Welcome to Cuba?

Before we dissect this "news," let's step back and appreciate the big picture. For many years the environmental movement has been warning that the out-of-control human race will imminently starve itself to death because of the Malthusian notion that population growth will outstrip food production.

Well, it hasn't quite worked that way. Instead of starving people and wealthy farmers (which is what should have happened if the doomsayers were right), we have fat people (see the recent Surgeon General's report) and farmers bellyaching about low crop prices.

The bad news, then, is good.

Getting back to the AP story: I'm a magazine editor, and I have yet to read in the newspaper that "editors' earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new editor program or approves more emergency payments." Do you know what I and my fellow editors have to do if our earnings drop to a level too low to live on? We have to look for higher-paying jobs! I assume that mechanics and real-estate salesman have to do the same.

But not the farmers. They have apparently been bestowed with the Divine Right to Farm. If they can't make enough to live on, they have the legal power to loot the rest of us so they can stay on the farm anyway. This sounds like insanity. Would someone please explain it to me?

Maybe the yeoman farmer, the noble man of the soil, is too busy lobbying for taxpayer subsidies to learn a little economics. But when a line of work won't pay a satisfactory income, it is the market's way of saying we have enough people doing that; go find something else to do. Why should farmers be an exception to a perfectly good rule?

An economist at Texas A&M was quoted saying, "Congress is looking at these numbers and saying, 'We can't live with that.'" Hah! He means that members of Congress won't let us taxpayers live with that, since they aren't planning to subsidize the farmers out of their own pockets. I can live with it, thank you. Besides, I gave last year, and the year before. I'm thinking it's time for the farmers to stand on their own two feet.

Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?

I know how the farmers would respond. They need special treatment because they have to contend with the weather and price fluctuations. Like that's something new. Farmers have been plagued by drought, floods, and pests since biblical times. Uncertain prices are just as old. Guess what: the free market long ago evolved ways for farmers to transfer the risks to people willing to accept them in return for the prospect of high profits. They're called insurance and futures markets. The government has screwed up crop insurance because it thinks it can handle it better than private companies. The futures markets still work. The principle is simple. A farmer doesn't know what the price of his crop will be when he plants it. But there have always been risk-takers who are willing to bet that the price will be even higher than the farmer is happy to accept. So the risk-taker promises to buy the crop from the farmer at an agreed-on price. That gives the farmer a guarantee against a lower price and the risk-taker the chance for a real killing. Everyone is happy.

In other words, farmers don't warrant special treatment. Capitalist technological advances have made it possible to grow more food on less land and with fewer farmers. Why don't we face it already?

But not the farmers. They have apparently been bestowed with the Divine Right to Farm. If they can't make enough to live on, they have the legal power to loot the rest of us so they can stay on the farm anyway. This sounds like insanity. Would someone please explain it to me?

Well, for example, while the price of goods such as cereal, bread and such has gone up along with inflation, the price of wheat per bushel hasn't changed (even with inflation) since the 1970's. The companies, rather than increase what they pay on, say wheat, have mostly just increased wages for their own workers. Which means that small farms really can't compete unless they are part of a cooperative (the big cooperative in Vermont that actually works pretty well is Cabot). And the cooperatives have a hard time competing with Canadian prices--Canadian farmers are fully subsidized by their government. But rather than try and buy US products, a lot of US food companies, naturally, go for the cheaper Canadian products. It's a complicated issue that can't just be blamed on the farmers--it's a whole rash of failed agricultural programs and a fair amount of royal screwings over by the industrial food producers.

Instead of starving people and wealthy farmers (which is what should have happened if the doomsayers were right), we have fat people (see the recent Surgeon General's report) and farmers bellyaching about low crop prices.

We also have a lot of fat farmers. The feed business where I buy my horse feed is a hangout for about a dozen farmers, most of whom are around 300 pounds. Point is, these guys are almost always there, good weather and bad, just hanging out. I recently checked that web site that shows farm subsidies by county, some of these guys are getting up to $800k a year in crop subsidies to not grow tobacco.

The real problems have to do with corporate farming, illegal labor thereby deflating the real cost of food, vertical ownership and the profiterring from value added processes. The game is fixed and when you see what the remedies are no one has the courage to stand up and say ok let's pay a fair wage for farm work, let's pay a fair price for farm produce, and let's keep so few hands from controlling so much of the production and supply. Let's start subsidizing family farms.

What does Sheldon Richman have to worry about? All of his food comes from the grocery store or the restaurant. That's where food comes from.

If and when the day arrives when Richman goes to the grocery store, or to the restaurant, and discovers they have no more food, he can always fall back on his, what, farming skills? Hunting skills? Fishing skills? One almost hopes that such a day arrives, if only for his comeuppance, but that would mean no food for the rest of us, either.

People need food. They do not need magazine editors. It is that simple.

If GM or Ford was to go on strike for a year and no new cars were available,the moment they went back to work carlots would have a hay day,no hagglin,just demand the price they want and they and the finance companies would love it,come to think about it,maybe the farmer should go on strike,withhold the beef,chickens, eggs, milk,butter,veggies,just quit producing for a year except what they would use for themselves.Now do you get the picture?The government subsidies are there to insure there is always enough to eat,as long as there are subsidies,no farmer will go on strike.

First of all someone should tell this shallow nitwit there is no such thing as "free market" (or "free trade" for that matter) every market including farming has government restrictions...even "deregulated" markets have regulators imposing strict regulations....

More important if a farmer is hit with bad weather destroying his crop he's likely done for an entire year...Can this "magazine editor" dole out thousands of, maybe tens of thousands of dollars only to have it all be ruined in one day and survive untill the next year?....

In other words if every year over the last 2 centurys a farmer went out of business we would not only be dependent on Arabs for oil we'd also be dependent on, worse yet, someone for or food.

It's nitwits like this "magazine editor" who has no problem with the government going in and shutting off irrigation water to farmers to save bottom feeding sucker fish.

I'll bet this same "magazine editor" would object to letting the farmer sell his farmland for development but have NO problem with the government taking it to save the environment or some phony "endangered species".

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.